Novak vs Australia

Another Australian Open, another psycho-drama

Djokovic at the French Open, 2024. Pic: Kuberzog

This piece, in slightly different form, first appeared in The Saturday Paper.

It wouldn’t be an Australian Open without several news pieces on the extravagant cost of beer and pizza (scandalous or forgivable?), endless “debate” about the quality of our crowds (barbarous goons or larrikin heroes?), or Daniil Medvedev losing his mind.

Nor could an Australian summer ever pass without some Djokovic-adjacent controversy, one that quickly spreads from the back page to the front and from there travels like floating embers into the mouth of the Prime Minister.

And so it was this year. Last week’s deliriously escalating brouhaha about Nine pundit Tony Jones’ on-air remarks (innocent banter or hate speech?), were preceded a week earlier by GQ’s publication of a curious interview with Djokovic. Curious because in the interview Djokovic alleged that the humiliation of his 2022 quarantine detention and subsequent deportation was much worse – and more sinister – than any of us knew. “I realised that in that hotel in Melbourne I was fed with some food that poisoned me,” he said. “I had some discoveries when I came back to Serbia. I never told this to anybody publicly, but discoveries that I had a really high level of heavy metal. Heavy metal. I had [a] very high level of lead and mercury.”

When questioned about this extraordinary allegation, Djokovic refused to elaborate. He’d said everything he wanted to say to GQ. It’s true that Djokovic maintains a fastidious diet – his body is not so much a temple as an astral spaceship fuelled by vibrations and nil bread or dairy – and so it’s not implausible that, given an otherwise fanatically controlled regime, he could ascribe the alleged poisoning to whatever he was fed at the Park Hotel.

Anyway. I’ll return to the fiasco of 2022 shortly. For now, Tony Jones. The Friday before last, during a live cross from the Australian Open, the ever-cheeky Mr. Jones stood before cheering Serbian fans and mocked their chants: “Novak, he’s overrated,” he said, grinning. “Novak’s a has-been. Novak, kick him out”.

It was both bizarre and boorish from a senior sports anchor, and Djokovic wasn’t impressed. After his fourth-round win, Djokovic irritably refused the usual post-match interview with Nine’s Jim Courier. He explained why in the press conference a little later. “A couple of days ago, a famous sports journalist who works for the official broadcaster, Channel Nine, here in Australia made a mockery of Serbian fans and also made insulting and offensive comments towards me,” he said.

“Since then, he chose not to issue any public apology, neither did Channel Nine. Since they are the official broadcaster, I chose not to give interviews to Channel Nine… a very awkward situation for me to face on the court today.”

“Famous sports journalist” was a surprising promotion for Jones, but it was indeed all very awkward. We had a stand-off. And an international incident. Again. Relations with Serbia, as well as with the Independent Kingdom of the Joker, were soured once more – and there appears something tragically fated between the hosts of the Australian Open, and the man who has dominated it like no other player in history.

As he had a fortnight before, the Prime Minister saw an opportunity to defend the champion’s honour and distinguish himself from his predecessor’s treatment of Djokovic in 2022. On the ABC, Albanese hoped for “more respect across the board” – a simultaneous reference to Jones and those larrikin crowds.

I have mixed feelings about all this. I have no doubt that Jones thought he was offering innocent banter, but he has neither the wit nor charm for it, and his weird improv reminded me of a bloke at a wedding reception lighting his own fart and accidentally igniting his suit pants.

On the other hand, I’m sympathetic to former Australian Open champ John Alexander’s appraisal that Djokovic’s skin is often gossamer thin. Over many years, Djokovic has acquired a stupendous record here – 10 singles titles – but feels that he’s never enjoyed commensurate respect from Aussie crowds. During tournaments, and even within matches, the Joker can lurch between public ingratiation and bitterness. He wants to be loved, often isn’t, and responds gracelessly. For a man possessed of granite will, the boozy irreverence of strangers seems to disproportionately affect him.

The resistance of the champ’s skin is likely not helped by the adoration of his most dizzy fans, nor the spooky love of his family, who likened him to Jesus Christ back when he was detained by our government in 2022.

But detained and humiliated he was, and whether his treatment resembled Christ’s crucifixion is not for me to say, so I’ll return to Jones’ clumsy invocation of Djokovic’s deportation. “If I could turn back time, and I know we’ve all got PhDs in hindsight, I think the one thing where I overstepped the mark… is the last comment I made in that back and forth with the crowd — ‘kick him out’,” Jones said in a televised apology a few days later.

Well, if we all possess those PhDs then we might apply our own hindsight and say that the treatment of Djokovic in 2022 was excessively punitive, bureaucratically shambolic and politically motivated. And we might remember that Djokovic’s visa was initially approved, sponsored by Tennis Australia, and supported by the Victorian Government.

As we might remember that the decision to revoke that visa, then to detain and deport Djokovic for his refusal to enter Australia vaccinated, was extremely popular in a country where many were exhausted by severe lockdowns and appalled by the idea of gifting an exemption to a foreign celebrity.

And finally, we might recall that Djokovic’s injunction against the immigration minister’s cancellation of his visa was always futile, given the vast discretionary powers enjoyed by the minister under the Migration Act. The Federal Court, obliged only to consider the legality of the minister’s decision, and not its merits, unanimously upheld it. Djokovic was gone.

Public scepticism of Djokovic was much greater than it was for the minister’s God-like powers, and several months before an election, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said of the court’s decision: “I welcome the decision to keep our borders strong and keep Australians safe”.

All of which is to say that I can both respect Djokovic’s athletic sorcery and understand any bitterness he might have about that time, and that in the cosmically trivial feud between Djokovic’s feelings and Jones’ clownishness, my sympathy would idly settle upon the former.

That is, until the spokesperson of the Serbian Council of Australia spoke on ABC radio last Monday morning, saying that Jones’ remarks were “absolutely traumatic” and that the Council had lodged a formal complaint with the Human Rights Commission.

My head spun. So profligate is our use of the words “trauma” and “traumatising” – so enthusiastically undiscriminating has their use become – that I feel licensed to my own spurious deployment, and suggest to you that I’ve recently become traumatised by their excessive use and subsequent depreciation.

Novak neither requested nor endorsed the complaint – petty outrage sponsors its own opportunities – but it perfectly punctuated a week of supreme stupidity. So, here we were. The clown and the champion – or the banter merchant and the thin-skinned villain – and behind it all was, of course, some tennis.

In the quarter-final last week, Djokovic prevailed over the younger and better-fancied Carlos Alcaraz in a classic. It was a signature assertion of will, but the match generated its own controversy when Djokovic began limping in the second set and called a medical time-out.

Suspicion bloomed: Djokovic is no stranger to the seemingly tactical medical break, and former world No.1 John McEnroe asked us all to be sceptical. Even Alcaraz seemed to suspect his opponent of feigning injury, theatrically clutching his own leg, and after the match the tournament’s former director Paul McNamee suggested that the rules governing medical time-outs be reviewed.

In Friday’s semi-final against Alexander Zverev, after just one set, Djokovic withdrew injured from the match – and thus, the tournament – and was booed by the crowd. The champ was genuinely injured, but the painfully damaged hamstring won’t be the only injury he leaves Australia with. “I cannot throw away all the incredible memories and results and achievements that I’ve achieved here over the years…” he said after the match. “Australia always will stay in my head, in my heart…”

I’m sure it will.